With XP's End of Life, Munich Will Distribute Ubuntu CDs

SmartAboutThings writes "Windows XP is going to officially die and stop receiving support from Microsoft in April, 2014. After that very moment, it is said to become a gold mine for hackers all over the world who will exploit 'zero-day' vulnerabilities. The municipality of the German city of Munich wants to stop that from happening [and] has decided to distribute free CDs with Ubuntu 12.04 to users of the almost extinct XP. Munich, through its Gasteig Library, will prepare around 2000 CDs with Ubuntu 12.04 to offer to city residents affected by Windows XP's end of support. Previously, it was believed that Munich city's authorities were going to offer Lubuntu 12.04, which would have required lower system requirements with the same support period."

Comments

Microsoft will pull back

[Anonymous Coward]

Migration away from Windows will be the norm for users of XP. Microsoft knows this, and will at some point in the near future announce at least another year of support for it while they work on what will hopefully be Windows 9, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the Windows 8 abortion.

Re:Microsoft will pull back

[VortexCortex]

I've had people accidentally install Windows 7 over Windows 7 and lose all their documents due to re-partitioning.

Have you ever installed Ubuntu? It's dead simple, even my grandma can create a dual boot system, which it does by default. There's a slider for how much drive space you want Windows to keep and how much you want to give Ubuntu.

You put in the CD, turn it on, and wait for the desktop to appear. Then you can use GNU/Linux to look at your documents and files, and use Firefox to browse the web (it's a Live CD), see if there will be glitch driver support or not (everyone should have a GNU/Linux or BSD live CD, just in case whatever OS files become corrupt you can still get at your files and use the web). If it's all good, you double click the desktop icon to install it, pick a keyboard and language and timezone, move a slider and soon you've got a dual boot system -- which means you can use Ubuntu and if for some reason you need to run your windows programs you can just reboot into windows (though wine can run a lot of windows programs -- it is a bit retarding for newbs to get programs into, needs a "here's my old windows partition" option, IMO).

It's actually very simple. Win7 installer is a bit more complex, but still easy. Try creating a dual boot Windows setup to try Win8 out. Clicking a few wrong buttons in any software will produce results you didn't want...

So yeah, saying random citizens are qualified to make a full switch over to Linux themselves is ridiculous.

You are a fool. It's too fucking easy. The average person isn't THAT dumb. It's about as difficult as installing any windows software [ next, next, next, install ].

Windows 8 is hell on Earth in UI form but at least it functions properly.

Correction: You are a troll or maybe a shill? Win8 doesn't fucking work for upgrades. It works SOMETIMES, most times it doesn't work. I installed W8 on a Toshiba laptop that came with Win7... USB drivers and Ethernet and WIFI don't work... So, put in a GNU/Linux live CD, booted up, wifi works, USB works, ethernet works, get on the web, go to the hardware vendor's site, download drivers and put them in the windows's user directory. Then reboot. THEN I could get windows 8 to work -- Except the USB drivers. So, I can't use any USB devices. The hardware vendors made the correct driver I'm told (after hours of support phone tag, saying W8 isn't supported, BTW, whatever cop-out they can give), however, the folks uploading the drivers to their support system copied the same Win7 USB driver where the W8 driver is.

I've had similar problem with downgrading from W8 to W7, but with an ethernet driver. Plop in a Linux CD, and it actually works. Point being: For every issue you can point out with Linux not working, there are AT LEAST as many instances of Windows8 shitting the bed. Ethernet?! USB?! WTF, it's a small number of chipsets that are widely supported, why create a different driver for each different vendor if they have the same cards under the plastic? The windows devs are idiots.

I'm not sure how I feel about this

[techprophet]

On the upside, Linux is being given away by a government as the successor to Windows xp. On the downside, how many kids/grandkids are there that will know how to fix their parents/grandparents Linux machines? I guess you could say I'm cautiously optimistic

Re:I'm not sure how I feel about this

[jellomizer]

We are from the government! We want you to have this OS, we guarantee it is better then your old one, because we are the government.

Perhaps I am just being a skeptical American. But anything with the Government Seal of Approval, makes me feel a bit scared. Not that I am a big fan of Microsoft or the Corporate entities are to be trusted. But at least with Corporations you know they are in it to make money. But Government and other organizations often have a lot of agenda's. Not always to your favor.

Welcome to Unity!

[RDW]

Nice idea, but Ubuntu is, by default, about the least XP-like common Linux distro they could have chosen. Mint-MATE or something would be less of a culture shock.

Re:XP rules!

[Lonewolf666]

After using Win7 for almost two years, I find it a marginal improvement.

Good:
-UAC is a good feature for those who understand the concept of "administrator" vs. "normal user".
-A lot of minor things (like "ejecting" USB sticks) that I found unreliable in XP work well now.
-64 bit support that deserves the name (Windows XP 64 never really took off).

Bad:
-Low level system settings are hidden deeper than in any previous version. You can still find them with a bit of Google help, but for people who are need to manage stuff like IP addresses and subnet masks directly I find Win7 actually harder to use. BTW that trend started with XP if not earlier...

Overall, I see the technology improving but Microsoft trying harder to keep the user from tweaking the system, often to the effect of annoying people who need special configurations. On the bottom line I consider Windows 7 an improvement, but one that could have been greater.

Dual Boot

[eric31415927]

Dual booting could be a popular option so that people can keep their old programs and data files. They should simply use Ubuntu for their web surfing and cloud activities. Keeping a separate drive or partition for shared data between the two OS's takes a small amount of time up front and makes the data sharing much easier.

Time for Microsoft to give back a little.

[Larry_Dillon]

There's just something fundamentally wrong with a company abandoning a product with such a huge install base. It's a huge Internet public health issue. Microsoft has a social responsibility by virtue of their success to act. I see four reasonable possibilities here.

1. Microsoft keeps releasing security patches for XP.
2. Microsoft ships a version of Windows 8 that will run on XP grade hardware.
3. Microsoft spins off XP into a company that will continue to support it.
4. Microsoft releases XP source code so that others can (at least have a chance to) patch it.

Eventually, all XP grade hardware will die, but with the advent of low power/low cost hardware XP could see a second coming if Microsoft would just support it. It's not like there isn't a huge amount of reasonably good software for the platform.

Imagine if a company in India bought XP and started releasing XP SP4 for like $10 or $20. So cheap that the 1st world wouldn't both to pirate it and still affordable to many in the 3d world.